My daily readings 10/24/2009

He doesn’t characterize value of “information services” very well. The core value isn’t the collection and processing of information–that is relatively easy. The core value is making available the right information when/where needed to make the right decision, etc. It’s not a total sum game where one must defeat the other; they can be complementary and exist in parallel. Both can continue to grow in value. There’s still a lot of growth to information services and it will transform over time. To ignore it would be short-sighted.

Why? Parker believes we’re shifting from the first phase of the Internet, which was dominated by what he calls “information services” These are companies like Google and Yahoo. But next up to dominate the web will be the “network services” like Facebook and Twitter, he believes.

He went on to say that Friendster was not a fad, it failed because of the failure to scale, not because of poor product execution. So how did MySpace fall? It was a “systematic product failure,” said Parker. And Facebook was smart to launch with the college campus networks. “College students didn’t have MySpace accounts, so we went for them,” Parker said. It was all about tightly spun networks at colleges, and that helped Facebook spread naturally and virally.

Parker also talked a bit about why it’s not always the best products that win. Craigslist, MySpace, AIM and eBay all were poorly designed or executed, yet they did well. This was because their networks were strong enough to overcome their bad products, Parker said.

SB: I think they’re just tying Google with change. The world is changing, the business models are changing. They’re making a leap that we’re causing that or we’re stealing from them, I think. I don’t agree with the conclusion, but I hear the pain.

SB: Yeah thanks for that question. I’ve been surprised about the controversy there. We want to make books available on a huge scale. We overcame tech challenges. We had to overcome the legal dispute, which we’re working on. These books have great content, even if they’re 50 years old. People need to access them and we need to pay them for that, we know that. I’m surprised by the resistance. But I’m optimistic that we’ll be successful and that we’ll provide access to tens of millions of books.